1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to an optical waveguide device for optical wiring, and to a manufacturing method therefor, which is capable of simplifying the connection of various optical integrated circuits and optical devices and the like, which are employed in the fields of general optics and microoptics and in the fields of optical communications and optical data processing, and the connection of optical devices between boards when those devices are mounted on boards for use in wiring in the field of optical interconnection.
2. Related Art
In recent years, a great deal of research has been conducted into optical waveguides, which are employed in the fields of optical data processing and optical communications technologies, with the object of the integration, miniaturization, improvement in function, and reduction in cost of such optical waveguides. In one area of the optical communications field, in fact, silica system optical waveguide elements for use in optical wiring have reached the stage of practical application (reference document: Kawauchi Masao, NTT R&D, volume 43, number 11, page 101 (1994)).
Furthermore, research into polymeric waveguides, which employ inexpensive materials and allow for simplified production methods, have also been widely conducted. However, these optical waveguides have all been investigated with respect to the advantages of optical waveguide elements as optical parts, and there is almost no perception of such elements as optical wiring parts, and almost no research has been conducted in this area. For this reason, in optical wiring technologies for establishing connections between devices and between boards (optical interconnection), there have been almost no examples of the use of optical waveguides as optical parts for connecting optical device arrays such as various laser diodes (LD) or photodiodes (PD) or the like, or parallel planar optical waveguides, which have the function of conducting the branching and merging of waves. Optical fibers or optical fiber tapes are employed in this type of optical wiring. Examples of such optical fiber tape include, for example, optical fiber tapes provided at both ends with multiconductor optical connector plugs, and the like.
When the conventional optical fibers described above are employed, most such fibers are comprised of silica system glass, so that as a result of the properties of the material, cracking resulting from sudden bending, twisting, compression, torsion, or the like must be taken into account, and sufficient excess length must be provided when the fibers are manufactured, and special methods are required for dealing with this excess length, so that the devices become larger and it becomes difficult to reduce the optical wiring boards and the like within devices to a compact size.
Furthermore, when optical fibers which are provided with multiconductor optical connector plugs at both ends thereof such as those conventional examples described above are employed, it is impossible to produce optical fiber tape which is provided with multiconductor optical connector plugs at both ends thereof in which the optical fiber portion is greatly shortened in order to reduce the length thereof. For this reason, it is necessary to provide a large amount of space on the boards for optical wiring, and this is inconvenient with respect to high density installation.
Furthermore, polymeric waveguides are optical wage guides which do possess flexibility; however, because there is no method for easily conducting optical connection with various devices, it is difficult to take advantage of this characteristic flexibility.